t(error)

they say you'll never forget where you were on 9/11 i was nine i sat in the kitchen and watched the television play out the violence hour after hour my child-like mind conflated the Two Towers in Tolkien's literary fantasy with these acts of misanthropy and i was taught at the dinner table that very evening that all of life could be reduced to capital letters defining a cosmic struggle of Good vs. Evil and yet regardless of their affiliation on this defunct political spectrum of left left left right left politicians canonize a legacy of injustice and oppression and in order to suppress democratic expression they propagate the notion that dissent is treason because the wars we wage are blessed by the sagely insight of rich old men who sit safely in mansions protected by picket fences as white as their skin while they play off our emotions and turn us into thoughtless sheep content to stomach the whims of politicians propagating vengeance i will speak this out even when my voice shakes because i have seen the hypocrisy of this war on terror that relies on terror to cultivate more terrorists in order to perpetuate the notion that Orwell posited war is peace freedom is slavery ignorance is bliss isn't it in my naïveté i rejected the reality of torture and murdered children for i nursed a secret hope that despite the pictures and videos that served as empirical evidence we were still somehow the good guys and they were the bad guys but Americans rained white phosphorous on Fallujah dropped the world's first and hopefully last atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki we toppled democratically elected socialists whose interests betrayed our self-serving agendas cultivating a policy of extra-judicial assassination regime change is the name of the game just ask the CIA they'd tell you business is booming but then they'd have to kill you so i switched off my TV screen and picked up books i read Slaughterhouse-V and treasured the way Vonnegut looks at the lives of even bees and butterflies as valuable intoning "so it goes" every time a living thing dies i read O'Brien's recollections of Vietnam a month later he said that like white lies tall tales and fishermen’s yarns every war story has a bit of truth and i've seen the proof in the photographs of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay in the aftermath of drone strikes that left pieces of kids scattered across the desert sands of foreign lands i see the toxic side-effects of systemic violence in the eyes of homeless veterans suffering on the streets with PTSD a flicker of fear livens a deadened gaze at the sound of every backfiring engine as if they're a thousand miles away on some distant shore betrayed by their own government once again a Purple Heart is a death sentence when there are 22 military suicides a day thanks for your service now die in silence like bad religion the phrase war crime is rather redundant and i testify not because i aim to disrespect the men and women in uniform on the contrary when i say fuck war it is because i cherish every brother and every sister who has perished in the churning gears of conflict they shoved tall tales of hope for a collegiate education and far-flung travel down our throats just sign here right along the dotted line we want you to march into hellfire we want you to send missiles into tiny huts and villages tracking cell phone signals we want you to sit down shut up and just do as you're told to every fallen human who has been sent off to fight on behalf of this or any other corrupt nation i sincerely apologize for not taking to the streets to protest a vitriolic ideology i regret filing my taxes when 54% or more of our budget goes to military expenditures so they could stick an M-16 in your hands and ship you off to die for abstract and so often arbitrary phrases like freedom and justice for all you were robbed of your liberty by a capitalist system that seeks profit like a false prophet for bank accounts soar in times of war and in my apathy i hammered nails into your coffin and i pride myself on being an anti-militaristic non-violent anarchist because i don't hate soldiers if i did i would remain silent and apathetic and let the government abuse its youth i celebrate humanity regardless of ethnicity and creed which is precisely why i despise this system that sacrifices generation after generation for conquest and imperial notions pray tell will we turn from the error of our ways wake up from this terrorist daze before it's too late and say the State can try to whitewash history but i refuse to let them brainwash me

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pearsonbolt

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